Open Source Electronic Voting Call to Action

Good news for us Dutch people!

Here you go for the translation (bit messy, but you get the idea), the numbers in brackets point to the footnotes:

The Dutch Minister for administrative renewal has decided to release the source for Voting on a Distance under GPL. The OSSOS program has offered support for that, amongst other things in the form of advice on the licensing-model, and the organisation of administration.

The department of home affairs (Dutch intern issues) held an experiment from june 1st to 10th, 2004. In that experiment, people living outside the Netherlands were able to bring out their vote for the European Union [1], via telephone and internet. More info is at the link [2].

For this experiment, the department of home affairs has ordered (the Dutch department of) LogicaCMG [3] to develop a voting service, and (The Dutch state) acquired the intellectual property for all program-code developed for this voting service. The program code is now available under GPL. That means, anyone who is interested, can download, view and use the code. The main reason to open-source this code was transparancy. A government offering a new service to vote is maybe able, by means of giving openness about the software used, to stimulate the use of this service. Citizens themselves, or interest groups, are because the openness, able to control if this software indeed does what it's meant to do. It's also the intention to let future developments to this software be available to the government - who paid for this software, and for other interested groups / people.

You can find the software on the software-exchange-platform of OSSOS [4]. On this exchange-platform, you can also ask questions or place remarks on the forum [5].

Lastly, some remarks about the GPL (trivial for us), if you'd like to download, look at the MD5 checksum (same in Dutch Language), you should read usermanual.pdf and LEESMIJ EERST.rtf (Readme first, think it's Dutch).

For questions, you should contact koa _at_ bprbzk _dot_ nl (Almost all Dutch people understand / can speak English, so feel free to mail them in English. Start you're subject with "Engelse vraag", which is Dutch for "English question", and it should work.)

You can download the zip at [url=http://www.ososs.nl/downloads/broncode stemdienst Kiezen op Afstand 2004.zip]http://www.ososs.nl/downloads/broncode stemdienst Kiezen op ...[/url]

The source-code looks silly, but according to one of the developers, Joe Kiniry, working at the University of Nijmegen, that's because it's "proven to be correct", his remark is in English, so you can read it yourself I think. Just look for his name and you'll find it.

[1] (Note from hkwint: citizens of the EU vote once in five years for the European Parliament, in which 731 representatives for whole Europe from all 25 different countries have a seat) [2] http://www.minbzk.nl/grondwet_en/verkiezingen/inspringthema_... (Dutch) Summary: The experiment is to test the possibility of make the voting less independent of the place where people are. 5351 votes came in by telephone or e-mail. The experiment also covered a test of letting people vote 'where they want' at the municipality-votes in 4 different, 50k-100k-citizen municipalities. [3] http://www.logicacmg.com/countries/United_States/Page8000 [4] can be downloaded at https://uitwisselplatform.ososs.nl/modules.php?name=Download... Then click "Kiezen op afstand". This downloads the zip-file. [5] The only interesting thread on the forum told it's not possible to compile the thing without the LogicaCMG-framework. This is because the LCMG framework isn't open-source, so can't be included in the download, because otherwise it would violate GPL.

The Dutch government isn't trying to implement it (yet), but Amsterdam does (see the paragraph called Amsterdam)! However, in The Netherlands, a 'rule' was adopted - saying in 2006, the governemnt should only use open standards, and the same thing is true for Belgium, however, I don't know their deadline for it. So it follows the voting-system should use open standards also. They even try to build a community to check the program code.

The experiment talked about in last post was also tested in another situation: Dutch people are always assigned a 'voting-office' (could be a school or gym) in their municipality where they should vote. If they want to vote somewhere else, even if it's in their own municipality, they have to file a (paper) request for it. This means a lot bureaucracy. Now, this experiment also tested, if people could go to another 'voting-office', and than vote using a computer. So the voting-computers are still in the voting-offices. That's also necessary to help voters who can't use a computer very well. People are however free, to choose to which 'voting-office' in their municipality they'd like to go.

Amsterdam

Everywhere in The Netherlands, except for Amsterdam, people vote using a voting computer. ( See http://www.election.nl/bizx_html/Europe/index.html for an example how they look over here, provided by a company called Nedap) However, in Amsterdam they still use a red pencil. For years I didn't know why, but now I found out: They don't want to e-vote when the program is closed! They rather stick to their pencil. The city-council has adopted a rule, which says they want to e-vote using open-source, but such an open source program didn't exist back then!

I think when this system is proven to work, it might be introduced at a bigger scale, but for now, nobody knows I think.

> Working on open source voting software on the one hand is a good thing, on the other, legitimizes a bad practice.

Obviously an important point of contention. However, in the U.S. states are being given quite a bit of money through the Help America Vote Act specifically to implement electronic voting systems. This is being done as much in the name of accessibility for the disabled as it is to "streamline" the voting process.

Additionally, while paper ballots do initially seem a more secure voting method fraud existed long before software entered the scene. Forgery, stuffing ballot boxes, hanging chads, altering voter rolls, etc. can all be solved or mitigated to some extent by using software (check out Electronic Voting - Evaluating the Threat http://www.cpsr.org/prevsite/conferences/cfp93/shamos.html). Here's a quick excerpt:

"Ballot systems are sometimes naively regarded as the safest, a vestige of our faith in the superiority of paper records over the electronic. The dream is that in order to verify the election one need do no more than gather up the ballots and tabulate them a second time. However, ballot systems are not only unsafe but completely unauditable. Ballots, particularly punched-cards, are easily forged. They must also be physically handled and transported, which provides the opportunity for substitution. Even if they are counted at the polling place by inserting them directly into the tabulating equipment, they must be gathered up for delivery to a storage location to be retained in case of a recount. Ballots are frequently damaged or altered by the equipment during tabulation. In this case, a recount will reveal a discrepancy between the original totals and the new results, but it is impractical to determine how the voter actually voted, since it cannot be readily discovered what condition the ballot was in when cast originally. And all of these problems arise before we even consider tampering in the form of ballot stuffing. When you see a ballot, try to imagine where it came from, whether the person who cast it was authorized to do so and whether the ballot is still in the same condition as it was when cast. You can't tell and neither can a tabulating machine, and no audit trail can change that." This isn't to say that I'm behind electronic voting 100%, it's still largely an experiment. However, since the U.S. has decided to undertake this experiment with or without an open source solution, it's certainly better to provide this option than to cede it all to private, closed solutions.